White Men (for Isaac Brock and Warren Zevon)

 Some shadow fell over the mirror as Turnkey drew the blade over his throat then rinsed off the cream, hair, scum in the basin. Mostly blue sky in the middle of everywhere, the movement, the sound of sea birds where they flew from the impersonal to the impersonal. He finished what he was doing then threw fresh water on his face and then poured it all into the sea. "Any suspicion of what's coming?" came the voice of Parkford as he made his way into the kitchen. "I'd love to know it if there were," was the usual response. "Suggestions!" the ratboy with the busted eye and the mangled ear -- must've followed Turnkey from the upperdeck, almost out of freedom, looking deathly, looking dearly serious. "What is it, man?" "Americans, I think," the ratboy said. "Four ships. Presumably armed. Moving fast as motorcycles." "What's a-- forget about that. Do you think they're fucking with us?" "Hard to estimate, sir," his body more full of concern than blood or any other matter at that point. "You can't estimate such things, Captain," said Parkford, "in my experience. If they're Americans, tho, they'll want at least one finger from every man on this ship." Turnkey wasn't much older than 33 or 34, he wasn't done being crazy or gambling, but he didn't want to die, and he wanted to go to prison even less. "I won't barter with Americans," he told ratboy. Rouse the others and tell them to start loading their weapons: if the Newworlders are peaceful, we'll go about our business. And if not...." "Understood, sir..." that smell of gasoline and dirty stoicism trailing after him as he exited the kitchen. "I'm afraid, sir," said Parkford. "I'll die if I have to, but I'd rather not." "We won't die save as a last resort, the cold veteran informed him. "We came out here to escape gods, not be them." They took to meditating on what nightmares lay ahead. 

They'd departed from a White African country some fifteen or sixteen months previous, fishers of everything from shrimp to sharks. The youngest about 13- or 14-years-old and no one older than Captain Turnkey. One or two had warrants from England and Germany -- petty things like walletsnatching and unlawful opioid possession. None believed in ghosts. They were dogs without owners. Men without documents in the modern part of the world. To live at sea, moving from port to port, paycheck to paycheck, hustle to hustle. Living and dying weren't separated by monotheistic faery tales; they were separated by the marrow that lay in their bones. 

When he returned up to the deck, Turnkey saw the men of his crew in a ragged assembly of flesh & purpose, like pages of a book that would never be published, let alone read. Some were sharpening knives or fingering the barrels of their rifles, the fishingrods and other gear laid elsewhere, in sight, a million miles away. He looked at their vulnerability with vulnerability. That peculiar trust that only exists when you know all other options have been thoroughly exhausted. The sea and the birds and the scum of the Dharma. 

Some of us wouldn't see another day and none of us would ever see that ship, again. 

I was about 28- 29-years-old. I wasn't about to give up my sincerity. Not just yet. 




**** 







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